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Hongkonger here: Although Cantonese is pretty alive and well in Hong Kong, it’s pretty clear that the Government is being pressured by the mainland to promote Mandarin. It is commonly taught in schools and the Government promotes “trilingualism and biliteracy”. Cantonese and Mandarin are both written in the same script (Hanzi), and the third language/second script is English. It’s pretty clear that not all three languages get equal treatment though. English is not that heavily emphasized but most schoolchildren will learn it anyway because they want to watch American movies and enjoy American meme culture (this is not a joke). Parents also want their children to be trilingual and biliterate for economic reasons. Hong Kong is a city that revolves around money and it’s very common for business to be conducted internationally in English. That doesn’t mean that Mandarin is doing well in HK though. Hongkongers have a very negative perception of mainlanders for being “uneducated” and Mandarin is associated with mainlanders. I can’t describe it as “racism” since everyone involved is the same race, but Hongkongers think mainlanders spit in the street, smoke in lavatories and don’t know how to sort recycling from rubbish. Doesn’t help that most of these stereotypes are to some extent, true.

all of this, 100%>

Cantonese is also alive and well outside of China. Most Chinese immigrant communities in Europe and South East Asia speak Cantonese. The PRC will never be able to erase the Cantonese language.

schoolchildren will learn it anyway because they want to watch American movies and enjoy American meme culture

This doesn’t surprise me but I had a lot of American friends who were into manga and Japanese culture enough to learn some of the language.

to be fair, America also has 2 million people in jail & 100 million with arrest records. we are not too far from a police state

(Let me preface this comment with: the fact I oppose what the Chinese and Russian government are doing)

Is this a joke? The US tell people in Hawaii and Puerto Rico they belong to them and still do terrible shot to Indigenous people and try their best to erase their languages and cultures. They also invaded and killed how many innocent people in the middle east?

They continue to support Saudi Arabia with weapons and billions of dollars, they support the genocide and apartheid of Palestinians, they continue trying to starve Cubans with their sanctions and blockade…

The Chinese government is doing fucked up shit but its absurd to think the US government hasn’t been committing atrocities for decades. Also, the Uyghur people being forced to work are making also making products like Nike. Nestle privatizes water and spreads propaganda so women stop breastfeeding to sell their powdered milk and Chiquita Banana committed massacres in Columbia in the 2000s…

Now the US is contemplating invading Mexico to “stop” the drugs from the cartels the US funds and arms by buying their products and selling guns they know will go to shady people. Also the US was flooding crack into Black communities to fund illegal wars and bombed a house in a Black community and assassinated almost all the civil rights leaders…

And “as a European” maybe you should read about all the fucked up stuff France has done and continues to do and why so many countries in Africa are ousting leaders and hate France. Or read about why Haiti is in the position they’re in. Or read about all the racist and fascist shit going on in Italy, or what Spain is doing to Catalonia and trying to do to the Catalonian language. Or read about the racist remarks the foreign policy chief of the EU said about how europe is a “garden” and the rest of the world is a “jungle” that could invade… The rest of the world is mostly in the positions they are in because of what Europeans have done in history.

Hexbear is the one I’ve seen acting out most recently to the point I just block any community I see from them

Lol was just thinking the same thing.

Are the tankies in the room with you right now?

Most of mainland China speaks Mandarin. More than 70% of Chinese speakers in mainland China speak Mandarin.

Cantonese is regional and only widely spoken around Guangdong, but very culturally tied to Hong Kong, Macau, and Guangxi which are all autonomous regions that the CCP has heavily wanted to completely pull into control. Eliminating their language is important to that aspect. Only around 6% of Chinese speakers in China speak the Yue family of dialects as a whole, of which Cantonese is an even more regional dialect of.

In written language at least I believe the CCP forced the development and adoption of Simplified Chinese, so it's not particularly out of character for them to force a one language system on all their territories. They will continue their authoritarianism until everyone looks, sounds, and thinks the same in their country.

I’m out of the loop here. I thought Cantonese is popularly spoken in China (and other parts of the world with Chinese immigrants/descendants). So even in China (like Guangdong), is Cantonese used very limitedly?

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in the last few years the CCP has been trying to erase HK culture and language and replace it with theirs, it's all to create "cohesiveness"

it is a language spoken in southern china (guangdong province, hong kong, macau). Most of china (mainland china) speaks mandarin, it's the largest of the chinese dialect groups. it's 'standard' chinese.